During the summer of 2015 I opened a support ticket (for the Rachio guys browsing the forum it was 75499). This ticket was related to not being able to save settings or control my iro intermittently. The primary symptom was a timeout from the rachio online app or from the iOS app when trying to change a simple setting such as rain delay. After much troubleshooting with tech support, we concluded that the issue was related to a faulty wifi module in the iro and support did an exchange on the unit.

Several months have passed with the new unit and I am still having the issue. Now with some free time over the holidays, I have done some additional network troubleshooting and have some additional info – I am hoping someone on this forum has encountered something similar and can help.

I have 2 SSIDs – the iro uses a SSID that is set to 2.4 GHZ only and is forced to the closest access point (approximately 50 feet from the iro). At one point, I did have an extender deployed, but it did not change the observed behavior - it has since been removed.

In earlier troubleshooting efforts, I opened up port 31314 to my network. I also have no MAC filtering deployed on my network (Ubiquiti actually does not provide a means for MAC filtering)

Newly observed behavior:

I have SSHed into the access point to which the iro is connected and am tailing the logs with a grep set to the MAC of the iro.

I am observing multiple disconnects/reconnects of the iro from the access point. A copy of the log is below (I have put spaces between the disconnect/reconnect blocks so that it is easier to see the frequency that this is occurring). I feel confident that the disconnect/reconnect behavior I am seeing is the root cause of the issue.- Is anyone aware of any issues with the iro that would cause it to disassociate an reassociate frequently from wireless access points?- For what it is worth, I have my iPhone 6 connected to the same SSIE and sitting on top of my iro in the garage. I am NOT seeing the same behavior.

Thanks for the quick response. I have also been working with Jared on front line support.

After your comments and some things that Jared mentioned, I removed the iro from its mounting plate and placed it on the floor directly below the access point to which it is connected – distance is no more than 8 feet with nothing but air between the iro and the AP.

From the perspective of the access point, I am getting 99% signal to the iro (-40 dBm). I am still observing the same behavior. Most recent logs from the access point look as follows:

Given the above, I am very comfortable that we are not dealing with a signal strength issue.

If it helps, I am more than willing to work directly with you and the WiFi chip provider to resolve. As you can imagine, this is getting more than frustrating. I love the iro, but may have to consider switching to another device if given the connectivity challenges.

I’m running my rachio on the ubiquiti lr without issue (. I’ll bet $100 you’re using zero handoff? I have a suggestion for you, the ubiquitis are turds, I have to bounce my antennas every night else I get your behavior with a few devices and it is transient. Sometimes it is my iPad next time it is my PlayStation, sometimes it is every device.

If you like I can help by providing the steps but seriously, go bounce all of these by hand and I bet the problem goes away for a week.

If you look on their forum there has been a long running thread about it.

Thanks for the advice. So far, the only device where I am seeing the issue is with the iro. Everything else in the house is rock solid, and I have quite a few wireless devices…upwards of 20 online right now.

I’d like to hear more on zero handoff if you don’t mind. It is disabled in my configuration (the AP-ACs don’t support it). I actually set up a separate ssid just for the iro and have only enabled that ssid on the AP that is closest to the iro. I know for a fact that I don’t have a situation where the iro is trying to connect to different APs in my house.

I’m from Rachio’s wifi supplier Franz mentioned; we actually run UniFi AC’s in our office, so we’d generally notice if there were issues with them. Ours are UniFi AP-AC v2’s, running version 3.2.10.2886.

I’d like to hear more on zero handoff if you don’t mind. It is disabled in my configuration (the AP-ACs don’t support it).

It allows a client to hop between antennas that doesn’t comply with 802.11 standards. I like it because it doesn’t cause interruption. So if you are walking around the house on a video call it doesn’t drop, ever

Network setup: My home has 3 Ubiquiti Networks Unifi AP-AC wireless access points set behind a Uiquiti Edge Router Lite. I have 2 SSIDs – the iro uses a SSID that is set to 2.4 GHZ only and is forced to the closest access point (approximately 50 feet from the iro).

On your advice, did do a hard bounce of the AP that the iro is connected to. The iro is still located about 10 feet from the AP, and since reboot (about 10 minutes ago), I have seen 5 disassociates – one every 1 to 3 minutes or so.

Here is a screenshot of my config. I am using HT20 and autopower as well. These AP-ACs were purchased in March 2014 (not sure which hardware version). Firmware version is 3.2.12.2920. I am getting approx -49 dBm for the client as reported by the Ubiquiti controller.

I’m not familiar with that product so is it 100% safe to assume that the rachio is not trying to blink up on the 5ghz band? Has the device blinked up before?
I’m just not familiar enough with forcing 2.4 from the ap side…I don’t know what that means…

I’m also not familiar with how blink up is utilized from the phone app, but if the blink up process was using the bssid, I could create a straw man as dual banded ap causing this issue via the blink up process as you could not ensure your phone was on the 2.4 band. But I’m way out of my league now, I know just enough to sound stupid at this point.